Category: Marketing

Questions to ask as you start a freelance business

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My friend Merlina McGovern — the smartest copy editor I’ve ever worked with — got laid off from my old company last month. After 16 years working for Forrester, she’s starting a business as a freelancer. She had questions, so we talked. Since any freelancer starting a business might have similar questions, let’s walk through … Continued

The lesson of author Bethany Mandel: don’t go on camera unless you’re prepared — and don’t make excuses afterwards

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If you’re going to wade into controversial public discourse, you’d better be prepared for the controversy. Otherwise, you could end up like Bethany Mandel, the author who humiliated herself on video, then made things worse by writing a vacuous essay about how bad it felt. Bethany Mandel is the coauthor of Stolen Youth: How Radicals … Continued

What if paid subscriptions didn’t automatically renew?

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As a consumer, you probably subscribe to a lot of ongoing (monthly or yearly) services. If regulations required you to proactively renew them, we’d wash a lot of stupid, poor corporate behavior out of the system. Should this be the law? Let’s explore what it might mean. What do you subscribe to? What do you … Continued

The dishonesty of The Dawn Project’s anti-Tesla Super Bowl ad

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An advocacy group called “The Dawn Project” aired an ad challenging the safety of Tesla’s Full Self Driving feature during the Super Bowl. The ad is a good example of dishonest fearmongering. Before I analyze the ad, let me clarify two things. First, this ad appeared, not nationally, but in local markets like Washington, DC … Continued

$7 million pays for a lot of annoyance

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It’s a noisy world. There are two ways to be heard. First way: Say something loud. Say it a lot. Shout and scream. Fill people’s inboxes over and over. Create ads that pop up and intrude. Annoy. Second way: Say something interesting. Say it to a few people who trust you. See if they’ll tell … Continued

AI sales copy insanity: idiocy at scale

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AI can write now, but it needs supervision. And failing to supervise it will make you look very stupid. Don’t believe me? My friend Maggie Langrick, the proprietor of the hybrid publisher Wonderwell, recently received this financing pitch, which she has allowed me to share with you. From: Tanner SyftestadDate: January 31, 2023 at 6:21:22 … Continued

Cybertruck approaches infinity

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Tesla has made an amazing claim for its soon-to-be-available, coyote ugly Cybertruck: the ability to pull “near infinite mass.” Here’s the text from the Tesla site: RUGGED STRENGTH With the ability to pull near infinite mass and a towing capability of over 14,000 pounds, Cybertruck can perform in almost any extreme situation with ease. This … Continued